Monday, July 11, 2016

Why AIPAC's Israel monopoly deserves to come to an end

Bruce Abramson is a politically conservative former lawyer colleague of mine. Jeff Ballabon is currently best-known as the man behind the Iron Dome Alliance, which is seeking to undo AIPAC's 'accomplishment' in making sure that the 2012 Republican platform was no more pro-Israel than the same year's Democratic platform. Jeff is a long-time pro-Israel activist with whom I am occasionally in touch (and who follows me on Twitter).

Bruce and Jeff have written a lengthy piece in which they demonstrate that AIPAC, the big 'pro-Israel' lobby, has lost its monopoly on pro-Israel lobbying. In the course of their article, you will understand why that's probably the best thing that has happened to US-Israel relations in a long time.

By eschewing policy innovation while occupying the entire field,
AIPAC has imposed upon pro-Israel activism the same sclerosis that
monopolists commonly impose upon the markets they dominate. In Israel’s
case, that sclerosis is both misplaced and dangerous. Israel is a small
state surrounded by enemies seeking her destruction and the genocide of
her citizens. As a foreign government dependent on the United States,
Israeli diplomacy compels conciliatory statements about American policy
and leadership. American activists are under no compulsion to believe
such statements. To the contrary, American supporters add maximum value
when championing the tough truths that diplomacy puts beyond Israel’s
reach.

Yet rather than pushing to expand Israel’s political playing field,
AIPAC has instead filtered Israel’s necessary diplomatic risk-aversion
through the partisan and policy preferences of its own membership. To
pick but one example, numerous American Jewish leaders, including
prominent members of the Conference of Presidents, have recognized that
American energy independence would weaken OPEC’s hold over American
policy and thus serve Israel’s interests. Rather than taking a
leadership role on the issue, however, AIPAC demurred, explaining: “We
knew as American Jews we couldn’t touch environmental issues and have
any credibility with our community. American Jews don’t want to destroy
Alaska to import a few barrels less from Angola.”

A political monopolist
who avoids alliances for reasons unrelated to its mission necessarily
weakens that mission—in AIPAC’s case, lobbying in Israel’s best
interests.
In classic monopolist form, AIPAC protects its market by playing to
avoid losing rather than to win. A pro-Israel lobby that played to win
would articulate basic, immutable principles for which it would
fight—and it would count among its “friends” only those elected
officials who supported these positions even when politically
inconvenient. Such a lobby would pressure Israel’s neighbors to work
with Israel while removing pressure on Israel to take risks that
compromise its security, and it would stop pushing to reward Arab
incitement and terror with a PLO-led state. Above all, a pro-Israel
lobby playing to win would innovate on policy, promoting truths and
ideas that run counter to conventional wisdom—even if such innovations
remain minority positions for the years that lobbyists often need to
assemble winning coalitions.

Anti-Israel forces understand the strategic imperative of policy
innovation, and they are rarely bashful about pushing ideas whose
absurdity is apparent to all people of good faith. Yasser Arafat first
fabricated Temple Denial from whole cloth in 2000, but within the past
year the New York Times has detailed the “controversy”
surrounding Jewish “claims” to the Temple Mount, and UNESCO has declared
the Kotel a Muslim holy site. BDS, which grew out of the United
Nations’ rabidly anti-Semitic Durbin Conference in 2001, began in
earnest with a coalition of radical fringe NGOs in 2005. By 2015,
allegations of Israeli apartheid and genocide had come to dominate
discourse among American academics and European parliamentarians.

Or consider the course of the so-called “Two-State Solution,” once a
policy innovation of the far left but now conventional wisdom. In 1980,
Jimmy Carter—hardly an Israel advocate—opposed as destabilizing the
emergence of an Arab state wedged into disputed territories that Israel
had liberated in 1967. Yitzchak Rabin, martyred in 1995 for his dovish
politics, never wavered from his opposition to a Palestinian state. In
1998, five years into the Oslo process, Hillary Clinton publicly implied
support for an independent Palestine; her husband’s White House issued
an official repudiation. Yet AIPAC now doggedly promotes “a negotiated
two-state solution—a Jewish state of Israel living alongside a
demilitarized Palestinian state.”

The erosion of Israel’s reputation and diplomatic standing among
Western governments—and in particular, among Western parties to the left
of center—should provide fertile ground for policy innovation. Who
objects to the canard that Israel is an occupier? Who lobbies the White
House to recognize an undivided Jerusalem—within its full current
municipal boundaries—as Israel’s capital? Who takes to task every
politician who differentiates the anti-Israel terror of Hamas, Fatah,
and Hezbollah from the world’s other instances of Islamist terror? Who
challenges the calls for “balance” in confronting the terrorist
mini-state of Gaza that are oddly absent from any discussion of other
terrorist safe havens? Who emphasizes the connection between
anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism? Who pushes American politicians to
revisit the Oslo agreement—particularly following Mahmoud Abbas’s
unilateral withdrawal from its terms during his 2015 speech to the U.N.
General Assembly?

To each of these questions, the answer is “not AIPAC.” In typical
monopolist fashion, AIPAC does more than underinvest in policy
innovation: It objects to policy innovations that might imperil its
monopoly. That objection traps pro-Israel activism behind a
lowest-common-denominator bipartisan strategy in an increasingly
partisan world.

...

Unsurprisingly, those taking these divergent worldviews also see
Israel very differently. To a progressive, even one with no inherent
animus toward Jews, Israel mirrors the worst of America—an oppressor
state occupying the territory of an indigenous people, practicing
apartheid policies, demonstrating contempt for the international
community, and seeking to play by a unique set of rules. To a
conservative, the situation is just as clear. Israel possesses all of
the right cultural norms and values, stands allied against America’s
enemies, and places itself on the front lines of a civilizational
battle. Israel holds itself to exceptional standards of humanity and
decency despite the constant threats to its existence and widespread
opprobrium. Support for Israel is thus a logical and consistent part of
the conservative worldview, while an outlier among progressives.
The elections of 2006 through 2010 solidified the resorting of the
parties by worldview, and furthered their divergent views of Israel.
Hillary Clinton’s hawkish Senate record cost her the 2008 Democratic
nomination. Foreign-policy realists boasting impeccable Republican
pedigrees—from James Baker and Brent Scowcroft to Colin Powell and Chuck
Hagel—suddenly found warmer receptions on the left than on the right.
Tony Blair, leader of the maturing European left in the 1990s,
discovered that Republicans were his most receptive American audience.
In 2016, Sen. Bernie Sanders galvanized young Democrats behind positions
overtly hostile to Israel. Sanders was also the only presidential
candidate who skipped AIPAC’s 2016 Policy Conference; his submitted
comments parroted much of the standard progressive anti-Israel
rhetoric—and earned widespread praise from the left, including J Street.

AIPAC’s strategic bipartisanship inevitably dismays both those who
view Israel through the progressive lens and those who view it through
the conservative lens. In the face of the post-9/11 transformation of
the American foreign policy debate, AIPAC remains rigidly dedicated to
blind bipartisanship, doing little to educate or inform its members that
most of them are trapped in an increasingly progressive Democratic
Party boasting an increasingly powerful anti-Israel caucus. Polls show a
partisan split on the issue of Israel v. Palestinians of 83R-48D, with
pro-Israel Democrats now representing a minority of their party. That 35
percent gap makes Israel one of the most extreme partisan issues in the
current political climate, not remotely a matter of bipartisan
consensus.

***

J Street studied its market well before launching. Its founders
understood that AIPAC could not help but alienate the large numbers of
Jewish Americans who consider themselves Progressives but harbor some
affinity for Israel. The rival organization built upon AIPAC’s
unyielding dogma that there is no difference between the parties to
insist that the anti-Israel policies gaining salience among Democrats
represent the true pro-Israel positions. By redefining Zionism as
something close to its opposite, J Street gives American Jews a license
to remain proudly progressive and frees Democrats to be increasingly
adverse while still maintaining they are pro-Israel. To J Street’s
supporters, Israel’s true interests at any given point in time are
precisely those that the left says they are—thereby eliminating any
potential dilemmas arising from a divergence of Israel’s interests from
those of the Democratic Party’s progressive wing. Furthermore, by
providing consistent visible Jewish support for President Obama’s
foreign-policy agenda, J Street has already conferred value upon both
its members and the Democratic politicians who need their support.

The Obama policy agenda that enabled J Street’s rise caught AIPAC
sleeping. For the first six-plus Obama years, nearly every policy or
pronouncement touching upon Israel produced a predictable sequence: J
Street emerged as an early, enthusiastic supporter, lauding the
president’s boldness and urging him to move in an even more progressive
direction. AIPAC noted both positives and negatives in the president’s
moves, studied their implications from all angles, and eventually
announced cautious, grudging support. As late as December 2013, amid
widespread alarm triggered at the Obama Administration’s dealings with
Iran, AIPAC called a special meeting of the Conference of Presidents to
demand that Jewish groups stop criticizing the president. AIPAC
Executive Director Howard Kohr declared at that meeting that AIPAC and
Obama share the “same goals” and have only “a difference of strategy”—an
assertion that AIPAC ought now regret.

Finally, in year seven, Israel’s government took an unprecedented
step to preempt AIPAC. In 2014, AIPAC had been willing to support the
president’s call to end sanctions on Iran as a step toward easing
negotiations. When it came to assessing the package that the Obama team
negotiated in 2015, however, Israel’s prime minister delivered a bold
and controversial speech to Congress that forced AIPAC’s hand. AIPAC had
little choice but to agree publicly with the Israeli consensus that the
deal represented an existential threat. For the first time in many
years, AIPAC appeared to launch a full-throated campaign to defeat a
Democratic administration priority—though it simultaneously offered
counter-productive (if not overtly cynical) reassurances that it would
exact no price from “friends” who supported the deal.

In 2016, AIPAC continues to monopolize the field of activists eager
to provide policy support for Israel, while J Street provides a useful
outlet for those unwilling to abandon progressive policy priorities
while maintaining or manipulating a pro-Israel self-image. Another
clearly visible market niche, however, remains unfilled: activists
adopting the conservative worldview unsatisfied with the compromises
inherent in bipartisan policy formulations.

The arrival of a partisan pro-Israel group to AIPAC’s right will
dethrone the Israel monopolist but not destroy it. AIPAC has invested
decades in developing a powerful brand, exceptional connections, a
demonstrated ability to work across the aisle, and unrivaled lists of
donors and grassroots supporters. Furthermore, AIPAC’s flagship
product—the foreign aid bill—is likely to become increasingly important
as fallout from the Iran deal triggers a regional arms race. Whether
broadly appropriate or not, to the degree that AIPAC can retain its
bipartisan relationships, it can help ensure continued military aid to
Israel regardless of the configuration of power in Washington.

In addition, though few cast it in such terms, AIPAC plays two other
critical roles: It serves as a Jewish pride organization and as a safe
space for Truman Democrats. Its annual Policy Conference provides Jewish
pro-Israel activists with a brief respite from pervasive anti-Semitism
and anti-Zionism. And AIPAC’s membership may represent the largest
remaining group of hawkish Democrats—voters who reject progressive
foreign policy even as they support other parts of the progressive
agenda. By providing a forum for such voters, AIPAC fills a niche
critical to American national security—as well as to the State of
Israel. Voters who place primacy on the ascendance of progressive
cultural mores and/or economic distribution, while still favoring a
strong national defense, deserve a forum in which they can speak
comfortably. AIPAC appears to be the only prominent organization filling
that need. Without such a forum, Democratic approaches to this
traditionally bipartisan belief will range from cavalier to
disdainful—much to the detriment of national security.

The pro-Israel community should push AIPAC to reposition itself with a
clear eye on contemporary reality. AIPAC can best serve the pro-Israel
cause by redeploying its formidable assets to help pro-Israel,
national-security-conscious Democrats defeat the anti-Israel
progressives ascendant in their party—certainly the most effective way
to ensure continued bipartisan support for Israel. New organizations
promoting policy innovation and adaptive political strategies must also
enter the pro-Israel market, however, to address challenges, push
policies, and forge alliances on behalf of Israel that run counter to
AIPAC’s strategic approach and the preferences of its members. AIPAC’s
directors and customers—i.e., the Jewish community’s leading
philanthropists and the grassroots activists who genuinely want to
protect Israel and the U.S.-Israel relationship—should accept nothing
less.

1 Comments:

Your incisive comments are powerful and undeniably true! I don't hold out much hope that AIPAC can reconstitute itself into a powerful organization that is reality based and undeniably PRO-Israel. I fervently hope that I am wrong. I want the content of their advocacy to encompass the content of ZOA and to go even further in strongly supporting what Israeli's on the ground support.

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About Me

I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com